Slashdot

Yeah, we've read the headlines.

We cover a lot of the stories over on Slashdot, and there's definitely some unpleasant effects.

But when you read the headlines, you don't really necessarily hear about all the ripple effects and negative consequences and just what exactly is going on.

We know that it's not good, and it's great to hear your sentiment and your feedback on having an inside look at this.

Sure.

Yeah, I was a computer science student when I read one of those, I think the second or third Slashdot article about Bitcoin in 2020.

It must have been 2011 or 2012, and got interested.

Like the second or third time it came through my information stream, I read the white paper and got pretty interested.

might be big.

And then it got, you know, Slashdot and a lot of techies ran it.

It got forwarded around and people are like, I better go and buy some of this.

If you can buy drugs on it, it's secretive.

Um, and in fact, the DMCA, this is funny because I was a...

Like, the other website that I started reading in '98 or '99 besides, mm, Ain't It Cool News obsessively was Slashdot, and those guys hated, hated the DMCA.

And, like, I was...

I, like, I just remember kind of reading like, "Oh yeah, they kinda, they kinda write about this." Like, this is a law that basically says you can't do what you want.

But because they had published this incredibly valuable, free, comprehensive resource on the Internet, a completely different community took notice.

Slashdot, right?

Yes.

A highly influential tech site called Slashdot links to the guide.

Suddenly, tens of thousands of highly targeted, technically savvy visitors flood the Moz website.

The servers are melting down.

It's just great.

I did news, and I, it, and I didn't talk about the bit where I, I actually, I edited Slashdot for [laughs] for a year or two, if anyone remembers Slashdot.

You did?

I did not know that.

I was brought in as the games editor for Slashdot, but slightly hilariously, I had to edit the front page as well, which meant I had to know a little bit about Linux, which I definitely did not, so that was entertaining.

You were also to do with Moby Games.

I was the person who rescued Moby Games from GameFly.

I did something like 10 startups in 12 years.

And it was in, uh, at one of those startups in 2011, uh, that I saw a story on this tech website called Slashdot, which said, "Internet-only currency Bitcoin has reached dollar parity." So this was back in 2011, February of 2011.

You can still go look up that exact story on Slashdot today.

Mm.

And I saw it, and I didn't know anything about it.